


Walking Away

by outrightmight



Series: Where Soldiers Go [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Spoilers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:25:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1428424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outrightmight/pseuds/outrightmight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes post-Winter Soldier. Self-discovery, mission parameters, ice cream and plenty of angst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walking Away

**Author's Note:**

> Because that stricken look he shot Steve at the end just hit me right in the gut.
> 
> 11/16/2014: Major edits as I picked up the story again, I wrote myself into a corner with the earlier drafts.

He leaves the man on the banks of the river. He pauses, for a moment, taking note of the slack face and the firm mouth. The blue-blaze eyes are shut now, and he is injured and breathing. He knows a man like this would have friends that would not stop searching until they find him. 

Beyond them, the world burns. 

He tastes metal and blood in his mouth, and this becomes a small comfort to him. He's used to burning worlds, being the ember at the core of the fire. He tramples fires down, or starts them. He burns things alive and wrecks them. He is cordite and a mask, the spent casing. He is the cause of things breaking. Never the rescuer, or the rescued. 

Still, he wants to give up. He doesn't know why he keeps fighting. He resists the urge to sit down next to the man and to wait. 

He resists this small urge because he does not _want_ or need rescue, but this man stirs up that feeling in him. 

The man who was known as Bucky Barnes walks away from the man on the bank.

He walks until the blue buzz at the back of his head subsides. Blue like the uniform, blue like his eyes. The surge of nausea follows, a familiar feeling that would have had him running to the chair to burn it out of his brain. 

Only now there is nothing to burn away. 

He barely remembers leaping from the falling carrier and diving in after him. All he can see are his eyes, and all he can hear are his words.

_To the end of the line._

He wonders why this man weeps so easily and often, and why he weeps for him. It's unfathomable. 

If he had someone to speak to, he would have asked, "What kind of soldier lets you hit him?"

If he had someone to speak to, he wouldn't have known the right questions to ask.

*

It is very easy to steal cars, even with their shrieking alarms and unfamiliar machinery.

He remembers this safe house because they used it before, not because he'd had any real knowledge of the city, or even of the country he's currently in. Flophouses are an essential part of any mission, especially if the asset you moved into mission areas tended to be unconscious. 

_Wake it._

He drives past affluent, tree-lined neighborhoods, mind hazy with pain. He reaches what he was fairly sure is a sort of Air Force base, given the number of airplanes that were swooping out of it like giant bats. This nudges his memory enough to make him take a left turn in the stolen sedan. He curses himself, just a little, for stealing a stick shift. After all, it would have been easier to steal an automatic. 

His injured arm lies useless in his lap. Like many of his kind (even if there are very few people who are like him), he has the ability to ignore pain until it becomes an impediment. 

This flop house is a fairly rundown, but not dilapidated town home with a screened porch and a small backyard. The old neighborhood it lives in meets the requirements of any flophouse: unfriendly neighbors who preferred that you did not ask what they do for a living and low housing value that meant plenty of foreclosures in the past . Still, he parks far enough away as not to attract suspicion and circles around the back before letting himself in through the kitchen door. 

He searches the house for drugs, first. The other soldier-- Steve -- dislocated his right arm, popping it out of the socket like a chicken wing. The pain is not unbearable, but the programming is. It drives him to check behind bookshelves and the abandoned piano. 

He destroys cupboard doors in a mechanical fury and finally starts to look in vents. He finds blankets, an lonely MRE package (which he eats) and not much else. Finally, he finds the small vials taped behind the exhaust fan in the bathroom but they are empty. 

The scream that comes out of him reverberates through the house and he smashes his arm through one of the walls before he comes to. 

He ends up manually popping his shoulder back into place by slamming it against a tile wall. It's merely an exercise for him, and he does so mechanically. He takes a long shower, unconcerned about the cold water. He'd had worse showers as a child in --

He can't remember where. He can only remember that he's used to showers like this.

After, he brushes his dripping hair off his forehead, staring into the mirror like it has answers for him. The man called him Bucky. But it isn't his name, nor did it make sense. 

James Buchanan Barnes. 

In his head he slowly dissects himself, taking stock of what is in front of him. Five feet, eleven inches, black hair, blue eyes, one useless arm and one metal one. 

" _Ya ponyatiya ne imeyu, chto delat._ " He says aloud to the empty bathroom. He says it again, trying out the English. It feels unfamiliar to him, the hard syllables and the lack of feeling. 

He sits on the edge of the bare mattress, staring at the wall as the sun sets and night descends. He sleeps, because there's nothing else to do. In the night, he talks out his dreams. 

"Steve, get back! You know those kids can beat the heck outta ya!" He yells, but there is no one to hear. 

He wakes the next day with a throat like sandpaper and a lost voice. He doesn't know why he feels so ashamed, but its a small, tiny churning in his gut. He sits by the edge of the bed again. Content to wait and not particular sure what he is waiting for. He knows simply that he must wait for extraction and to do nothing until then.

He waits. 


End file.
